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UAV Communications for 5G and Beyond: Recent Advances and Future Trends

arXiv 1901.06637 ↗First posted 20 Jan 2019cs.NIcited by 24

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Abstract (arXiv)

Providing ubiquitous connectivity to diverse device types is the key challenge for 5G and beyond 5G (B5G). Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) are expected to be an important component of the upcoming wireless networks that can potentially facilitate wireless broadcast and support high rate transmissions. Compared to the communications with fixed infrastructure, UAV has salient attributes, such as flexible deployment, strong line-of-sight (LoS) connection links, and additional design degrees of freedom with the controlled mobility. In this paper, a comprehensive survey on UAV communication towards 5G/B5G wireless networks is presented. We first briefly introduce essential background and the space-air-ground integrated networks, as well as discuss related research challenges faced by the emerging integrated network architecture. We then provide an exhaustive review of various 5G techniques based on UAV platforms, which we categorize by different domains including physical layer, network layer, and joint communication, computing and caching. In addition, a great number of open research problems are outlined and identified as possible future research directions.

Key facts. Cited by 24 papers in the map (data through 7 Oct 2026). First posted on arXiv 20 Jan 2019.

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Cited by year (2026 to 7 Oct)

Citing papers per year: 2021: 5; 2022: 4; 2023: 2; 2024: 6; 2025: 4; 2026: 3.

24 papers.

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  1. 2024Large Language Models for UAVs: Current State and Pathways to the Futurecited by 33
  2. 2022Machine Learning-Aided Operations and Communications of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles: A Contemporary Surveycited by 27
  3. 2024Generative AI for Unmanned Vehicle Swarms: Challenges, Applications and Opportunitiescited by 14
  4. 2021Trajectory Design for UAV-Based Internet-of-Things Data Collection: A Deep Reinforcement Learning Approachcited by 7
  5. 2025Scalable UAV Multi-Hop Networking via Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning with Large Language Modelscited by 4
  6. 2023Deep Attention Recognition for Attack Identification in 5G UAV scenarios: Novel Architecture and End-to-End Evaluationcited by 3
  7. 2021Machine Learning Methods for Management UAV Flocks -- a Surveycited by 2
  8. 2021Attention Based Communication and Control for Multi-UAV Path Planningcited by 2
  9. 2022Deep Reinforcement Learning for Task Offloading in UAV-Aided Smart Farm Networkscited by 2
  10. 2023Reliable and Efficient Data Collection in UAV-based IoT Networkscited by 2
  11. 2021Efficient UAV Trajectory-Planning using Economic Reinforcement Learningcited by 1
  12. 2022UAV Base Station Trajectory Optimization Based on Reinforcement Learning in Post-disaster Search and Rescue Operationscited by 1
12 more
  1. 2024Self-Supervised Path Planning in UAV-aided Wireless Networks based on Active Inferencecited by 1
  2. 2024Energy-Aware Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning for Collaborative Execution in Mission-Oriented Drone Networkscited by 1
  3. 2021Networking of Internet of UAVs: Challenges and Intelligent Approachescited by 0
  4. 2022Towards On-Device AI and Blockchain for 6G enabled Agricultural Supply-chain Managementcited by 0
  5. 2024DeepAir: A Multi-Agent Deep Reinforcement Learning Based Scheme for an Unknown User Location Problemcited by 0
  6. 2024PCA-Featured Transformer for Jamming Detection in 5G UAV Networkscited by 0
  7. 2025PIKAN: Physics-Inspired Kolmogorov-Arnold Networks for Explainable UAV Channel Modellingcited by 0
  8. 2025Performance Comparison of Aerial RIS and STAR-RIS in 3D Wireless Environmentscited by 0
  9. 2025Quantum-Inspired Multi Agent Reinforcement Learning for Exploration Exploitation Optimization in UAV-Assisted 6G Network Deploymentcited by 0
  10. 2026AI-Empowered UAV-Assisted Backscatter Localization and ISAC for Zero-Energy IoT: A Comprehensive Surveycited by 0
  11. 2026PRIME: Plasticity Recovery in Multi-Agent Environments for UAV-Assisted Emergency Communication Networkscited by 0
  12. 2026Threat-Aware Energy-Efficient Deployment for Dynamic UAV Networks: A Multi-Agent RL Approachcited by 0